Feed Count Meme
Maki from Dosh Dosh has created a meme about displaying Feed Count and has tagged me. The following are his questions for the meme with my answers:
Why do you display the Feed Count for your blog?
I have been displaying the feed count on this blog ever since I discovered Feedburner which was a long time ago and I had only about 20 RSS readers back then. It was late by the time I realized that I had made a mistake by displaying my feed count so early. It would be best to display your feed count when you have atleast a few hundred subscribers, as a low feed count can discourage some readers from subscribing to your blog.
Coming back to the question, I decided to keep the feed count anyway as I have a decent feed count currently and that could help me get even more subscribers.
How long did it take you to reach the current feed count? Was the growth gradual? Any notable external factors that had a positive or negative effect?
My feedcount was around 500 until Google started reporting subscribers, and then it slowly increased to 900+ and recently I was able to reach 1000+ . Perhaps if I post more frequently I can improve my feedcount.
Irregular posting can decrease feedcount slowly as readers start unsubscribing.
Apart from displaying subscription buttons, what other ways do you use to encourage your readers to subscribe to your blog feed?
- email subscription form
- asked readers to subscribe at the end of every post “Enjoyed this article? Subscribe to the RSS feed“
- dedicated subscription page
In your opinion, what is the most effective way to increase your feed subscription?
Including an RSS feed icon above the fold can help increase your feed subscription. Also keep writing quality content regularly.
These are some posts I recommend reading if you wish to increase your RSS subscribers:
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Maki
March 18, 2007 at 5:06 am
Thanks for participating in the meme, John.
I do agree that displaying your feed count too early might be detrimental to attracting more subscribers.
All the best .. and hope you can crack 2000+ soon!
Broc
March 18, 2007 at 6:07 am
maybe you can answer me this:
why does the feed count go up and down so drastically?
and by drastically, i mean it fluctuates up and down 10-20 subscribers a day
Ashish Mohta
March 18, 2007 at 12:30 pm
@Broc: Feed count depends if somebody accessed your feed or not.So if i subscribe and don’t read your feed, its one down to your next day count.
It includes all the feed readers and live book marks except email subscriptions.They count if the mail is sent to them….
Hope that helps.
lyndonmaxewell
March 18, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Nice tip on that one. I agree with the fact that if you do not have numbers as yet, don’t show them. Wait till it gets higher and more stable.
Daniel
March 18, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Ashish, not all RSS readers behave that way. Most of the readers, in fact, get counted even if the reader is not accessing the feed (i.e. bloglines, google reader, and son).
The only readers that cause fluctuations are the “on-demand” ones like firefox bookmarks.
Ashish Mohta
March 18, 2007 at 6:46 pm
@Daniel: Thanks for the clarifications.I wasn’t aware of this.So Firefox livemark is one that is fluctuating The things.
Ramanathan
March 19, 2007 at 6:31 pm
John, its nice to get these thoughts from you. Now, I have to rethink having count on my blog.
Daniel, Thanks for the clarification. I never knew it.
antrs
March 19, 2007 at 9:24 pm
What is the meme?
ilker
March 21, 2007 at 5:48 am
Funny.. I was just reading about this meme over at Dosh Dosh! I guess I’m always late in finding out =)
Ryan J. Parker
March 22, 2007 at 10:23 am
antrs, it’s the “chiklet” that shows how many subscribers you have.
David Bradley
March 23, 2007 at 2:03 pm
If a site has enabled their feedburner stats but chosen not to display them, you can still find out how many subscribers the site has, why you’d want to do that I’m not sure, but it’s an interesting exercise I discussed on ScienceText
antrs
March 24, 2007 at 9:25 pm
ok ryan, this show how many subcriber (feed) we have, is’n it?
chatca
March 24, 2007 at 9:27 pm
@antrs
many feed subscriber that mean many loyality visitor
jason
March 27, 2007 at 10:54 am
John, how do you use email subscription form for gaining new feed subscriptors??
JohnTP
March 29, 2007 at 11:22 am
jason- You can use FeedBlitz
Robert Irizarry
March 31, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Jason - I’ve been working the Feedblitz side of things primarily. My impression to date is that readers in my niche are far more comfortable with email than RSS feeds. With time, I suppose that will change as more and more people learn to leverage feeds.
nitinpai
April 1, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Hi John,
I like your articles. Have also subscribed to your feed. I wanted to ask you one thing. Please tell me which host you run your blog on.
I am running mine on BlueHost, but i am finding the response time quite slow. Can you recommend me any good host.